Pulsar Strike
by DrCyrusBortel
Summary: Join Atomic Betty and her crew as they see (one of) the astrophysical wonders of the Local Group of Galaxies, meet interesting life-forms, and kill them! (The bad guys, at any rate). A swashbuckling tale of science and combat! "Firm" Science Fiction. Formerly "Atomic Exposition", now full-length.
1. Questions

"…so your day job consists of flying around the galaxy in a corvette…"

Betty turned quizzically to look at Noah, and, remembering her surroundings, turned to check the quiet, empty North American suburban street for eavesdroppers. Satisfied, she spoke.

"We call it a star cruiser, Noah, but I think you could call it a frigate or patrol boat – it's definitely not a capital ship."

"…a space cruiser, responding to military emergencies by conducting naval engagements and light infantry battles."

Betty frowned, annoyed that her friend thought of her as a mere soldier, and began.

"Well, a lot of my missions actually involve rescue and relief operations, but yes."

"And the forces available to you consist of…"

"One robot, one helmsman, one lightly-armed spacecraft, an armory's worth of light and medium weapons, and me."

Noah quizzically scratched his head.

"Not much of a force, considering the scale of the operations you're sent to conduct..."

"We punch way above our weight, yes."

Noah, his interest piqued, continued his barrage.

"How large exactly is your organization?"

"I'm… not sure. The Galactic Guardians are pretty heavily compartmentalized."

"Your organization doesn't sound like a regular military…"

"It isn't. Admiral DeGill commands a security garrison for HQ, I trained with regular military, and a lot of my gear is mil-spec, but the Galactic Guardians aren't regular military."

"What exactly is the role of the Galactic Guardians in the uhhh… governmental structure?

"According to what I was told in Basic, the sheer size of the Galaxy makes true centralized government impossible…"

"Even with faster-than-light-travel?"

"Noah, the Local Group is ten million light-years across, and has nearly one-point-five trillion stars, billions of which are populated. Galactic government isn't centralized - most planets run themselves with minimal interference, and enforcement of what few galactic "laws" there are – mostly trade and sophont rights laws – is pretty sketchy. Our job is to stop that lawlessness from descending into complete anarchy – and represent Galactic civilization wherever we go."

"Sounds important."

"A good analogy might be the Marshals of the Old American West. Like the Old West, the galaxy is too big to run properly, and all the government can do is send in the occasional visiting Marshal and hope for the best."

Noah raised an eyebrow. As one of the few sources of law and order on the lawless American frontier, many Marshals of the Old West had acquired fearsome reputations – and earned the respect and admiration of the populations they served.

His friend's appearance on galactic television (well, 3-V) suddenly made much more sense.

"A space marshal with kiloton-yield energy weapons, combat armor, and an intergalactic spacecraft. Sounds like something from those old "Space Patrol" stories."

"Those authors pretty much nailed it, I guess…"

Noah suddenly had a very unpleasant realization, and frowned.

"And the Galactic Guardians recruit children?"

"Some Galactic Guardians are recruited from pre-contact civilizations in order to maintain the neutrality of the Galactic Guardians in local conflicts."

"No, Betty, I'm not asking how they recruit personnel; I'm asking why they recruit juveniles. You know, CHILDREN. Don't they have adults to recruit from?"

Betty stopped dead in her tracks, and her expression grew serious.

"Huh. I never thought about that."

Realizing that he had stepped into a conversational minefield, Noah decided to change the subject.

"Betty, I heard your boss calling you "Atomic Betty". What does "Atomic" mean?"

Betty snapped out of her contemplative torpor, and resumed her purposeful stride.

"Oh. It's a title, with the connotation of "Marshal" or "Peacekeeper". It's my job description, as distinct from my rank of Captain."

Noah raised an eyebrow.

"How is it that an alien civilization uses the same rank structure as human militaries?"

Betty chuckled.

"It doesn't. "Captain" is just what my Babel Fish translates my rank to."

"You have a universal translator in your ear?"

"It's a brain implant. Standard issue."

"Did they have to crack open your skull, or did they assemble the thing in your brain from nano…"

Betty's bracelet chose that moment to begin beeping insistently.

Noah frowned. "Huh. Duty calls?"

Betty glanced at Noah apologetically, and responded.

"Duty calls."

"Well… good luck, then. I'd better… uh… make myself scarce so I don't see any state secrets or anything. Stay safe."

* * *

Betty ran into the bushes, accepted the call, and saluted to the low-fidelity, jam-resistant, heavily-encrypted visage of Admiral DeGill.

"Ahhh… Atomic Betty, I have a mission for you. A strategically important mining station in the Large Magellanic Cloud is under attack. The system must be retaken. I'm currently in the middle of something, so you'll have to read the report yourself for the details."

Betty nodded. "I'll do my best, sir."

Admiral DeGill smiled. "I know you will, Atomic Betty. Good luck."

* * *

His briefing over, Admiral DeGill turned his attention back to a far more significant task – interpreting the fossil collection of London's Natural History Museum.

The collection's mineralized skeletons of ancient terrestrial organisms, unmistakably the predecessors of so many of the Milky Way's sentient DNA-based inhabitants, predated any similar fossils of DNA-based lifeforms by many hundreds of millions of years.

They firmly established Earth – a backwater, pre-contact world of no significance whatsoever – as the origin of nearly five percent of the sentient population of the Milky Way Galaxy.

They would revolutionize (i.e. throw into turmoil) countless fields, from Galactic History to xenoarcheology to biology to medicine…

…and, by virtue of the presence of his forces (and headquarters) on-planet, control of access to this monumental find was the sole province of himself, Admiral DeGill, Commander-In-Chief, Galactic Guardians, Orion Arm.

Earth was turning out to be far, far more interesting than he had anticipated…

END

*Note that some Atomic Betty episodes refer to missions to other galaxies, indicating that the titular character's adventures are intergalactic in scope.

* * *

This segment of Atomic Betty was sponsored by the Bureau of Development.

 _A tall, gangly, middle-aged Chinese man walks into frame._

Hi, kids! I'm Ho Lok Shang, Administrator of our great nation's Mars Settlements. As you can probably tell from my light frame and build, I grew up on Mars! Was born there too!

 _PSA cuts to a stunning vista of Mariner Valley, complete with rusty-pink sky and orange ground._

Beautiful, isn't it?

Space is the future of our great civilization, and if you move to Mars when you grow up, you can be a part of that future too!

So, when you think about what you want to do when you grow up, consider us.

Consider Mars.

*GOVERNMENT-MANDATED DISCLAIMER: Ho Lok Shang is a major shareholder of Ho Hydroponics. The Solar System's largest offworld agricultural operator, Ho Hydroponics owns and operates hydroponic farms, chemoautotroph food-microbe vats, and live animal farms on Luna, Mars, Deimos, Callisto, and Mercury, providing food to hundreds of thousands of offworlders. Images used in this promotional video may have been enhanced. Prospective settlers to Mars need to be vetted by the Bureau of Development's Healthy Colonist Program, and must meet criteria for academic and skill-based qualifications, general competence, and psychological health. Moving to an offworld settlement is a major and often irrevocable life decision which should not be made in haste. The evidence that the low-gravity environment of space prolongs lifespan remains equivocal. Long-term habitation in space may lead to muscle wasting, loss of bone density, and manageable growth deformities in children.


	2. Prompt Galactic Strike

"Sparky, fire up the hyperdrive and take us to these coordinates. I'll brief you en route."

While somewhat fazed by the lack of a proper briefing, Sparky, a career military pilot with half a decade of experience under his belt, was well accustomed to obeying instructions. A pull of a lever brought the spacecraft up to relativity-ignoring, causality-breaking, physically-meaningless velocities as space-time was bent to the will of the hyperdrive.

Sparky turned around to face his CO.

"And… we're en route. Where exactly are we going, Chief?"

"A pulsar. I can't believe I'm finally going to get to see one up close."

Sparky, suddenly lost, sheepishly raised his hand. Betty nodded for him to speak.

"I know it was on the civil service exam… but what's a pulsar?"

Betty and X-5 both sighed. X-5, drawing on the data stored within his yellow chassis' hard drives, began to speak.

"A pulsar is a rapidly rotating neutron star, an extremely dense dead star consisting of neutrons, which possesses a ridiculously strong magnetic field. The rapid rotation of the powerful magnetic field generates strong electric currents, which produce beams of radiation emanating from the magnetic poles. Because the magnetic poles are not necessarily aligned with the rotational poles of the neutron star, the beam of radiation sweeps in a circle across the sky. To a distant observer, the neutron star is observed to "pulse" rapidly as its beam sweeps across the observer. The radiation environment of a pulsar is extremely hostile, not only because of the radiation beams, but because the surface of a neutron star is so hot that it glows the color of x-ray."

Noticing that he had lost Sparky at the last point, X-5 reiterated.

"Hot items, like radiators and red giant stars, glow red. Even hotter stars and molten metal glow yellow, white, or ultraviolet. Neutron stars are hot enough to glow x-ray."

Sparky nodded, and asked another question.

"Uhh… Chief? Why are we going to a pulsar?"

"Three hours ago, a mining installation orbiting a pulsar in the Large Magellanic Cloud suffered a catastrophic annihilation reactor failure. In about one hour the pulsar will rise above the horizon of the unshielded mining station - and fry every single sophont inside."

A puzzled look came over Sparky's face.

"Evacuating the station sounds like a job for the mining company's tug, not the Galactic Guardians, Chief."

Betty smiled, and nodded.

"True. But this particular station, which produces prodigious quantities of heavy elements, including fissile isotopes and superheavy elements, is of strategic importance to a friendly, galaxy-loving star-nation of V!room. These V!room are in the middle of a war against an unfriendly, xenophobic star-nation of V!room."

Sparky leapt into the air.

"So we suspect foul play, then!"

Betty nodded.

"Actually, foul play is already afoot. The loss of the station's annie-plant happened just after the unfortunate loss of their tug, and a probe dropped in to investigate picked up a conveniently positioned freighter inbound to the station to 'provide assistance'. Oh, and the station's communications are being jammed."

Betty turned to her entire crew (one green-skinned alien and one robot).

"Our job is to aid our allies in this skirmish, and demonstrate the resolve and ability of the galactic community to rend aid and assistance to its allies."

"Limited to single patrol vessels and fireteam-sized units." X-5 sarcastically added.

Betty put her game face back on, and motioned to the screen.

"Put the system map and station schematics on-screen, X-5. We've got five minutes before we pop in-system. I also want some fabber time for a little surprise for our 'friends'."

END

* * *

 _Factoid Time with Atomic Betty!_

 _Betty Barrett, clad in her pink-and-white BDU, walked into frame, standing out brilliantly against the pastel blue unanimated backdrop._

 _"Hi, kids! I'm Atomic Betty!_

 _As you know, I work with aliens all the time, and I've learned a lot about different alien civilizations._

 _Our scientists here on Earth, on the other hand, haven't been so lucky. Despite years of searching the skies with everything from giant radio telescopes to gravitational wave detectors, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, better known as SETI, has yet to come up with a single confirmed alien transmission._

 _Obviously, the real reason they aren't picking up anything is because us Galactic Guardians have faster-than-light communication technology, and our brave scientists here on Earth don't._

 _Plus, the Galaxy is a big place. Alien megastructures can get lost pretty easily among the billions of stars._

 _Don't ask me why Aerospace Defense hasn't picked up my space cruiser, though. It's a secret."_

 _Sparky's shrill voice rang out from off-screen._

 _"The trick is to shape the shields into a perfectly square box! Reflects 100% of the radar energy away from the receiver every single time!"_

 _Betty turned to her left, and harshly shushed her subordinate._

 _"Okay, okay, sheesh…"_

 _Betty turned back to the camera, and continued her presentation._

 _"As I was saying, SETI hasn't turned up anything yet. But astronomers have heard some pretty weird stuff over the years, mostly from natural phenomena._

 _For instance, in 1967, astronomers Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish picked up a perfectly regular pulsating radio signal from deep space. While reasonably certain of the natural origins of the signal, the astronomers briefly entertained the speculation that the signal might be an alien beacon, and as such jokingly named the radio source "Little Green Men-1" or LGM-1._

 _The radio source was soon identified as a pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star, by other scientists in the field. Today, LGM-1 goes by the much less interesting name of PSR B1919+21, and shares the sky with a multitude of other identified pulsars._

 _The pulsating radio signals from pulsars are extremely regular – nearly as regular as the ticks from an atomic clock, the most accurate timekeeping instruments available to mankind. Furthermore, each pulsar "pulses" at its own particular rate, allowing individual pulsars to be identified by their pulsation rate._

 _As such, the Golden Records carried on the Voyager probes – currently zipping through interstellar space – contain a map of 14 pulsars and our sun's position relative to them._

 _Don't hold your breath for aliens to find the probes, though. At the speed they're going, the probes would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, and they're aimed nowhere near it._

 _Well, that's all for today, kids. Let's get back to my mission!_


	3. Space Superiority

A pulsar, like any neutron star, is formed when the core of a giant star becomes too heavy to support itself, causing it to collapse into a giant ball of neutrons. This process releases an immense amount of gravitational potential energy – enough to blast the rest of the star apart in a supernova, in fact.

Sometimes, some bits of blown-off-star return close enough to the neutron star to form a new disk of material around it, which can coalesce into dust… asteroids… and even planets.

The material to form a disk can also come from a disrupted companion star of the neutron star.

The extensive debris disk around the pulsar had been formed by the latter process. Owing to the carbon-rich nature of the long-gone companion star, it was composed mostly of carbon compounds. Instead of silicates and ices, its asteroids and planets consisted of carbides and diamondoids. The glittering, coal-black spheroids would have stuck out like sore thumbs from the icy white, stony grey, and organic orange planetoids of our own Solar System.

The larger bodies of the system still glowed red. The youth of system had given the planets little time to shed their vast reserves of gravitational potential energy - not to mention radioactive decay heat-turned-geothermal energy.

The colder, smaller rocks were highly enriched in rare heavy metals and interesting isotopes –products of the immense energies of the supernova that had given birth to the system.

These rocks were the object of the V!room presence in the system.

The V!room mining station was a giant asteroid-grinder, two kilometers across and a kilometer deep, attached to a vast refinery and a comparatively tiny set of habitat modules.

Built in a polar crater of one such asteroid, it was shielded from the harsh hail of ionizing radiation that flowed from the star by kilometers of carbide minerals and the shields generated by the station's annihilation-plant.

With the subsequent destruction of its annihilation-plant and the alteration of the planetoid's spin axis by the massive explosion, it was safe no longer.

* * *

Sparky squinted as he appraised the dimly glowing dot in the center of the starfield.

"Huh. It's not much to look at, isn't it?"

"Most of the radiation from the pulsar is in the form of ultraviolet and x-rays – so, yes, it isn't much to look at in the visible spectrum." X-5 replied. "With the correct instruments, however…"

X-5 sent a command, and a magnificent magnetic field, the poles of which converged on a brilliant point, filled the screen.

"We can stargaze later, boys. Sparky, take us in for an unpowered flyby of the station. X-5, I want neutrino, EM, and gravity wave sweeps – passive only."

At their commander's sharp retort, X-5 and Sparky burst into a flurry of preparatory activity. X-5 suddenly spoke.

"It appears we have lost the element of surprise. We are being hailed by a V!room freighter."

Betty nodded.

"Put them through, X-5."

An odd, trilaterally symmetric, bright blue branching bush clad in some sort of lightweight powered armor appeared on screen. A V!room. Betty spoke first.

"By the authority of the Galactic Guardians, you are hereby ordered to evict this system and return it, and the installations therein, to their rightful owners. If you do not comply, you will be forcibly ejected from this system."

The creature on-screen responded.

"Galactic Guardian, you do not possess the necessary force to remove us from this system. Remove yourself from this system, and we will grant our prisoners free passage to worlds of their choosing. Decide to fight, and you will be destroyed – and, while we will treat our prisoners according to our laws and customs of war, prisoners they shall remain."

Betty reviewed her mission objectives.

 _"Your mission priorities are, in order of priority, to_

 _1)_ _retake the System from the enemy_

 _2)_ _destroy the enemy task force_

 _3)_ _demonstrate military and technological superiority over the V!room_

 _4)_ _secure critical infrastructure_

 _5)_ _ensure the safety of the station crew and their families"_

The choice was clear.

"Your counteroffer is unacceptable. Goodbye."

* * *

While the V!room commander was not surprised by the Galactic Guardian's final decision to fight, he was quite surprised by the complete unwillingness of the Galactic Guardian to negotiate at all. Nonetheless, he was prepared for such an engagement, and immediately began putting his plans into action.

* * *

The inky black sky of the star system flashed white as plasma from a distant shaped nuclear charge spent its power against the patrol vessel's shields, and Betty felt her stomach churn as the ship's inertics struggled to compensate.

X-5 stated the obvious. "Captain, we are under attack."

Betty immediately began issuing orders to her crew.

"X-5, lay down countermeasures, decoys, and harassing fire. Sparky, Flight Plan C!"

The starfield spun wildly as Sparky jinked and spun the spacecraft along a previously plotted trajectory, and Betty heard the familiar sound of emptying weapons bays. Hundreds of nuclear-bomb-pumped x-ray lasers, antimatter mines, and other munitions were discharged into the vacuum of space – and unleashed upon the V!room.

A barrage of flashes followed as the gigaton-TNT-equivalent bomb-pumped lasers fired simultaneously at identified enemy mines and missiles – and bathed a distant V!room freighter-turned-assault-ship in radiation.

While the X-rays would fail to overwhelm the ship's shields, the x-ray echoes would provide X-5 with additional information about the ship's capabilities.

* * *

The V!room freighter had been fitted with a fairly standard armament for a light frigate. Mass-drivers, neutral particle beams, lasers, standard gravitics, mines, and a few thousand shield-breaching "breacher" missiles festooned its girdles, and a small swarm of drones provided additional defensive fire and sensor coverage.

Nonetheless, while maneuverable, a warship it was decidedly not, and, in accordance with the battle plan, it began moving away from the rapidly approaching patrol vessel as it was showered by (mostly ineffectual) fire at extreme range.

The missiles, mines, and other expendables had already been deployed along likely attack vectors, and began attacking the intruding patrol vessel immediately. Nuclear forged-fragment projectiles, nuclear shaped charges, and the occasional cloud of superdense ball-bearings (quite deadly at closing velocities of substantial fractions of the speed of light) were hurled with abandon at Betty's patrol vessel. Space flashed and spewed synchrotron radiation as dust particles, stellar wind, ball-bearings, and nonphysical spacecraft shields interacted, providing both sides with a vast torrent of data which was immediately analyzed for weaknesses.

The patrol vessel jinked and jerked at accelerations of thousands of gravities as it sought to avoid the hailstorm of energy directed towards it, its occupants protected by nonphysical force projectors.

The projectiles that could not be avoided were showered with confusing electromagnetic and gravitic signals, which jammed and rendered impotent guidance systems, proximity fuses, and other electronics needed for the weapons to run true. These confusing signals were in turn analyzed by battle electronics, which recalibrated weapons to ignore them in a short but deadly game of electronic warfare chess between non-sentient artificial intelligence.

Particles and photons that could not be tricked or avoided were showered with other particles and photons from the point-defenses of the patrol vessel. Point defense cannon, phased array lasers, and shields all worked in seamless synchrony to ensure the survival of the ship against the maelstrom of enemy fire.

* * *

Due to the awful reaction times of organisms blindly cobbled together by the forces of evolution, precision aerial bombing systems across the Galaxy (including those of a hairless, upright, tool-using species of apes) have long relied on computer-controlled systems to drop bombs and fire bullets.

This allows bombs and bullets to be fired and dropped at very precise altitudes and times, improving the accuracy and precision with which enemies can be bombed, strafed, and killed.

The button-pushing retained in such systems merely authorizes the computer to release ordnance, and does not command the release of the ordinance itself.

Artificially intelligent weapons systems, like naval CIWS and the weapons systems networked to X-5, dispense with the command-authorization step altogether, and can intelligently employ firepower based merely on a commander's intent.

As such, while quite dramatic, Betty's following exhortation to her spacecraft's weapons systems was completely unnecessary.

"X-5, drop the package… now!"

* * *

The inbound Galactic Guardian vessel jinked again, and released a swarm of relativistic missiles at the rapidly accelerating freighter. These were quickly and efficiently swatted from the sky by a combination of lasers, point-defense drones, and gravitics.

Suddenly, the Galactic Guardian vessel began a headlong charge at the freighter, dispersing billions of relativistic ball-bearings, nuclear shaped charges, and other weapons at the spacecraft, filling its maneuvering cone with (relatively easy-to-avoid) shrapnel.

Erring on the side of caution, the freighter turned its powerful phased-array lasers to meet the new threat, and pulled picket drones out of the line.

At that moment, a powerful flash of x-rays and gamma radiation erupted from the surface of the neutron star, blinding and confusing sensors – including those guiding the point-defenses on the starward side of the freighter.

Milliseconds later, a brace of relativistic missiles slammed into the shields and point defenses of the starward side of the spacecraft, overwhelmed the weakened defenses by sheer weight of numbers, and blew the freighter apart in a multi-gigaton explosion – killing all aboard.

* * *

Betty smirked as her opponent vanished in a cloud of rapidly expanding vapor.

"Gotcha."

* * *

The V!room commander (safely on-board the mining station) cursed.

Tactically and strategically, while the loss of the freighter was a severe blow, the worst news to come out of the engagement was that indigenously-manufactured V!room weapons were ineffectual against first-line Local Group craft. The Galactic Guardian's patrol vessel had been able to dodge, jam, or withstand weapons that would have readily overwhelmed even true warships of the V!room.

Personally, however, the V!room commander felt like a fool. During the initial engagement, the Galactic Guardian had slipped a brace of relativistic missiles – probably modified specifically for this engagement – into a relativistic hyperbolic orbit around the neutron star. A heavy burn, using actual rocket fuel – probably a modified nuclear shaped charge of some sort – at the point in the orbit closest to the star had imparted enough kinetic energy to the missiles to propel them to tremendous speeds. At the same time, the impact of the rocket fuel on the surface of the neutron stars had produced a flare of x-rays sufficiently powerful to blind point-defense sensors.

The Galactic Guardian had obviously worked on this plan for quite some time*, and it (for the oddly-shaped Galactic Guardian had none of the features of any of the V!room sexes) had executed it perfectly.

Now, even as he tried to coordinate what was left of the automated missiles and mines that continued to harass the enemy spacecraft, part of his mind shifted to the boarding action that was certain to follow.

 _*Actually, less than five minutes, thanks to years of work by generations of tacticians and on-file blueprints for weapons specialized for combat around white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes._

END

* * *

 _This episode of Atomic Betty was sponsored by the Antarctic Atomics Corporation._

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 _Tell your parents!_

 _*Yes, nuclear fracking was studied in the 1970s, and use of nuclear explosives to stimulate oil and gas deposits was actually done in the Soviet Union._


	4. Insertion

"Sparky, match orbits with the mining station. X-5, prep the package for Phase II. I'm going to have a little chat with our hosts."

Betty punched a button on her console, and the image of the armor-clad, frond-shaped V!room negotiator reappeared on her screen.

"As you are no doubt aware, your space support forces have been cleared from the system. I now possess space superiority. Surrender immediately, or face destruction."

The V!room's tone (translated through Betty's Babel Fish) was defiant.

"Your bargaining position is weaker than you think. You may possess the firepower to level this station, but you do not possess the manpower necessary to retake it! Our relief will soon arrive, and you will be the ones facing destruction."

The screen went dark, and Betty smirked.

"Well, at least they can't say we didn't try to resolve this peacefully. X-5, drop decoys and nukes. I want every inch of the surface of that rock hot enough to glow! Laser anything that shoots back!"

"Aye, aye, Captain."

The inside of the cockpit suddenly brightened as the shields glowed with inefficiently redirected energy, and Betty felt the familiar inner-ear-disrupting feeling of inertial compensators under strain.

"Chief, we're taking fire! Nuclear forged-fragment mines, missiles, and bomb-pumped lasers!"

The view out of the cockpit betrayed the tremendous accelerations Sparky was putting the spacecraft under, as the fixed stars bobbed and wove with the motion of the spacecraft. New stars – x-ray lasers and shaped nuclear explosions, attenuated by powerful shields – popped in and out of view.

The fireworks display suddenly died down, and a reddish (formerly jet-black), roughly spherical asteroid, fifteen kilometers in diameter, came into view.

X-5 began his report.

"I have been able to track and destroy over ninety percent of estimated enemy space assets. As you can see from the reddish glow, my preliminary bombardment has increased surface temperatures on the asteroid to over one thousand degrees Kelvin. The flux of penetrating radiations generated by the thermonuclear, antimatter, and matter-conversion bombardment is likely to have rendered inert any enemy munitions emplaced on, or just beneath, the surface of the asteroid."

Betty, impressed with her crew's work (and by the immense power at her disposal), grinned.

"Time to get our hands dirty, boys."

* * *

In a bunker, buried under twenty meters of (now glowing, radioactive, and half-molten) regolith for radiation protection, a roomful of V!room workers, miners, and their familes – hostages all - released their sphincters, spilling out their literal last meals (along with sizeable portions of their stomach linings).

The moans emulating from the silent tombs reached a crescendo as cells died, immune systems flailed blindly, and neural cells screamed in pain.

The moans slowly died down as overtaxed, badly damaged nervous systems seized, convulsed, and ceased to function entirely.

In another, much more well-equipped bunker, shielded both by regolith and the shields of a small, deployable annihilation reactor, a platoon of armored V!room commandos loaded their weapons, checked their suits, and prepared for battle.

* * *

Three figures descended onto the glowing regolith of the asteroid. Of the three, two were clad in low-profile strength-enhancing powered armor and the third was equipped with intrinsic armor and weapons systems. Protected by an umbrella of powerful electronic countermeasures, decoys, and overwatch provided by one heavily-armed patrol vessel, the trio proceeded to float silently towards the installation on vector-control packs.

While the enemy had been deprived of large-scale shielding by repeated assaults, enemy teleport denial was still up and running. With the option of blasting the entire installation off the asteroid off the table, a conventional ground assault would be necessary to retake the station. The task of conducting this assault now fell to Betty and her team.

"The Enemy", in this case, was a well-dug-in, lavishly-equipped (albeit with somewhat outmoded weapons), well-trained, battalion-strength V!room combined arms force.

Betty thanked her lucky stars that the enemy had been unable to circumvent the safeties on the mining installation's civilian-rated fabricators, which would have allowed them to mass-produce combat drones, light spacecraft, and even armored vehicles. Nonetheless, she could expect to encounter a very large number of repurposed reconnaissance and mining drones, and perhaps even light security robots.

Betty stopped worrying about enemy force dispositions, contingency plans, and fallback options for a moment, and let herself gaze at the pristine, star-smattered black sky. At that moment, with the noiseless interior of her helmet as a backdrop, Betty remembered why she loved space.

Each and every one of the myriad points in the unfamiliar, alien sky was a star, and most of them had worlds around them. Worlds of unique chemistry and geology, and if you were lucky, biology and history as well, just waiting to be studied and explored...

Each point of light visible through the smart-glass of her helmet represented light that had left the surface of a star, travelled years, millennia, or eons thorough the cold, empty vacuum of space, and finally come to rest on her retina.

It was beautiful.

As the looming arc of the worldlet's miniscule (and glowing!) horizon grew in her field of vision, Betty slowly (and somewhat reluctantly) forced herself back to the task at hand.

"Chief, we're coming up on the surface! Do you want us to start feeding the fabbers?"

Betty put her game face back on. Her team was counting on her.

END

* * *

This segment of Atomic Betty was sponsored by the Shock Rocks Candy Corporation.

 _Cut to color TV image of a subterranean nuclear test._

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 _The ground shakes with the power of a subterranean five-megaton blast._

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 _The twenty-meter cavern glitters with green, violet, and blue salt deposits._

 _A worker takes off his helmet, picks up a violet-colored piece of fused salt…_

 _…and pops it into his mouth._

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 _…and breaks out into a toothy grin, giving a thumbs-up._

"Shock Rocks! A nuclear explosion your tongue can enjoy!"

*The nuclear test in question would be most similar to Project Gnome, which excavated a cavern in a layer of salt in the early 60s.


	5. The Atomic Battlefield

Spider-shaped automatons, V!room ambush drones are designed to bury themselves in advantageous positions and emerge to ambush enemy forces like trapdoor spiders.

A trio of drones detected movement. Three targets… no four… no three, and multiple enemy combat microdrones.

The targets drew within range.

The spiders pounced.

* * *

Two flashes of light – signifying successful hits by her ship's gamma-ray lasers – marked the destruction of two drones. Alerted by her neural interface (and by the heavily-filtered light streaming into her retina), Betty spun around, and kicked the third drone (too near to fire upon with naval artillery) in the optics package, following up with a karate chop to the chassis.

The drone's spun nanotube armor was no match for Betty's powered macromolecular armor, and the drone crumpled like an aluminium can.

Two more drones appeared in her field of vision, and Betty blasted them both apart with one round each from her shoulder-mounted cannon - before realizing that she could have left them to her overwatch.

Satisfied that her surroundings were secure, Betty scooped more dirt into her bracelet fabricator, resumed the fabricator's routine. From her bracelet, a small armada of mite-sized robots poured across the landscape. The microbots kicked up small clouds of dust as they removed mines, identified ambush robots, and ripped apart the enemy's nano-sensor network.

With orbital support at the ready, the enemy was unlikely to contest her advance to the habitat facility – at least not without a thick roof over their heads.

* * *

A salvo of micro-missiles, each armed with a small kiloton-yield nuclear shaped charge, descended onto six different points on the massive wall of the habitat facility. As the cloud of glowing vapor cleared, six gaping holes emerged in the façade of the (already depressurized) facility.

Consisting of an interlinked series of atria and courtyards surrounded by multi-tiered balconies of offices, shops, and residences, the habitat facility, in nicer times, had been home to thousands of V!room workers. In a bid to make the facility seem a little more like home, they had covered the terraces and balconies with purplish-black climbing photoautotrophs, which had given the facility much of its character.

The workers were now dead or dying of radiation poisoning, and the plants had desiccated in the vacuum of space, becoming dry and crispy fronds that broke on the slightest touch.

The defenders had expected to be assaulted by a substantial force, with armor, air support, and drones. As such, they had prepared a conventional defense of the interlinked courtyards (which would have to be taken to move heavy forces), emplacing heavy weapons and personnel on the middle balconies to fire against enemy units canalized into killing zones.

They had not expected an assault by a three-man fireteam, nor had they expected the enemy forces to attack directly _through_ the chains of abutting apartments and offices – by blasting holes in the walls between them. This was, in hindsight, entirely predictable, considering the long history of "mouseholing" through walls in urban warfare.

* * *

For her part, Betty had not expected the enemy to turn the gravity upside down – a gambit that had cost her precious seconds as she sought to reorient herself.

Betty hated to stop while enemy forces were closing in on her, but given the office's direct terminal to the installation's computer systems, she needed to give X-5 more time to access the system.

A swarm of grenades sailed through the air, and were soundlessly blasted to pieces by Sparky's shoulder-mounted laser point-defense guns. Betty followed up with a searing, wide-beam flash of near-infrared from her ray gun to fry any nanobots deployed by those grenades.

A pair of three-legged gun-pods scrambled into the room. Betty aimed her bracelet, and let loose a stream of smart, self-powered, self-targeting, explosive throwing stars. The throwing stars jinked and spun on nonballistic trajectories, destroyed both gun pods, and swarmed out the door to seek their next victims.

The roof and floor (well, floor and roof before the artificial gravity had been inverted) caved in, and eight V!room commandoes poured fire into the room.

Betty, Sparky, and X-5, shields flaring, withdrew to another room. Betty paused, checked a sensor she had left behind, and let fly five rounds from her shoulder-cannon. She then blasted a hole in the ceiling and leapt thirty meters to close with the commandos.

Four commandos were blown apart by the superdense projectiles, and the fifth was knocked back quickly enough that his inertics failed to compensate, reducing his lightly-skeletonized body to a puddle of goo.

The remaining commandos were taken by surprise, and Betty was on top of them before they could react, blasting, punching, and kicking her way through the enemy fireteam. Suits were reduced to battered hulks, skeletons were pulverized, and organs were liquefied by shield- and armor-enhanced blows as legs and arms met tentacles, heads, and trunks.

X-5 dropped a grenade into the floor below, and the remainder of the enemy team was reduced to ash by a dial-a-yield nuclear hand-grenade with the explosive power of a metric ton of TNT.

Betty's sensor grid detected an approaching enemy response team. Quick as a flash, Betty fabricated a swarm of corpse-jacking necromancer-nanobots (a new-generation Galactic Guardian weapon the V!room were unlikely to have encountered before), and grimaced as four (relatively intact) enemy casualties shambled to their feet, ready to fight their former comrades.

While the reanimated enemy corpses, with their useless armor and horrible aim, would likely fail to kill the enemy, they would sow terror (and hopefully chaos) among the enemy forces. Heck, Betty was a little unnerved by the walking corpses, and she was the one controlling them.

* * *

Elsewhere, in the vast industrial complex servicing the mining installation, dozens of giant fabricators – assembly lines capable of producing virtually anything using a mixture of robotic tools and nanotech-based assemblers – went online in a frenzy of activity, producing thousands of new robots in a matter of minutes.

Grievous damage had been inflicted upon the facility, and many more robots would be needed to repair it.

* * *

Leaving the walking corpses behind, Betty and her team proceeded deeper into the complex, avoiding all doors and open spaces by liberally blasting holes in bulkheads.

Betty's eyes now surveyed a courtyard that had to be crossed the old-fashioned way.

Betty tallied the collateral damage her actions would likely cause, shrugged, set a dial-a-yield golf-ball-sized nuclear hand-grenade to 0.1 kilotons TNT-equivalent, tossed it sixty meters into the center of the courtyard (thank goodness for powered armor), and dove for cover.

The shielded, ECM-equipped grenade spun and bounced to avoid enemy point-defense lasers, reached apogee, propelled itself downward… and detonated.

With no air (the vaporized floor notwithstanding) to conduct blast or convert radiation into heat, virtually all of the grenade's energy was emitted in the form of x-ray and neutron radiation, weakening exposed shields, blinding sensors, and throwing the defenders into disarray.

Betty immediately capitalized on this disarray, and leapt from cover to engage the enemy. Even as she blasted nearby hostiles apart with her wrist-mounted particle beam, target after target was obliterated by her semi-autonomous shoulder-mounted railgun and its subcritical Americanium-Lithium-Deuteride slugs (i.e. thermonuclear bullets).

Betty drove her team across the courtyard, swept the courtyard with fire from all angles, and forced the remaining defenders into a killbox, where they were duly annihilated by a brutal particle beam crossfire from Sparky and X-5.

* * *

The V!room commander watched with horror from his CP as B Company was ripped to shreds by the three aliens.

The V!room commander pondered his response. While the bipedal Galactic Guardian was a skilled ship commander and apparently an excellent infantryman, the biped had made a tactical error. Perhaps expecting the habitat module to be unguarded, the biped had decided to pass through the habitat module to reach what was undoubtedly the main objective - the mine's industrial complex. This had given the V!room an opportunity to intercept the biped.

Now, with things going sideways, the V!room commander could hope the remnants of B Company would suffice to neutralize the threat, and keep his reserve in place & intact at the main industrial complex. Alternatively he could throw his reserve, C Company, into the fray.

Considering the poor performance of B Company, and considering that a follow-up engagement with C Company would likely produce similar results, the V!room commander decided that the risk of allowing the Galactic Guardian to defeat his forces in detail outweighed the risk of a follow-up assault in a different location. He would not allow his forces to be destroyed piecemeal.

C Company was duly deployed forward to meet the threat.

* * *

Betty ducked for cover as another salvo of V!room antimatter grenades detonated in mid-air, their containments shattered by X-5s point-defense lasers. Popping up from her new position, she haphazardly squeezed off a burst of suppressive particle-beam fire, let her railgun's targeting reticule linger over a V!room commando, and ducked back behind cover the moment she saw her target get ripped apart (spilling bits of carbonized V!room across the room) by an thermonuclear hypervelocity slug.

"Captain, enemy reinforcements have outflanked our position. We appear to have lost the tactical initiative, and are being forced into a dead end."

Sparky began yelling.

"Choice of words, tin can?"

Betty frowned.

"What's coming?"

"I am uncertain. We will have to lure the enemy into areas which we have seeded with micro-cameras."

A fresh platoon of V!room infantrymen, accompanied by the standard gaggle of combat drones, nano-swarms, and other units, appeared around the corner. Drones lay down a curtain of suppressive fire, forcing Betty to keep her head down as the enemy scrambled for superior firing positions left and right.

"It appears the enemy has deployed an additional company of commandos to destroy us. Seismic sensors indicate that this unit is supported by armor."

Sparky cried out in terror.

"They're sending tanks?! Just how are we supposed to fight tanks?!"

Betty grinned viciously.

"Bring it."

* * *

The concept of a heavy, armored vehicle, equipped with anti-vehicular weapons, has emerged, evolved, and matured independently in a myriad of armed forces across the Local Group of Galaxies.

Nonetheless, the same basic physical, tactical, and engineering principles of warfare applied (more-or-less) equally to these armed forces, and the final products – large-ish, lumbering, vehicles with one primary weapon and multiple secondaries – were reasonably similar in tactical utility.

For instance, while the V!room equivalent of an MBT lacked treads or a turret (its main weapon being a built-in railgun, aimed by turning the whole vehicle), and was a fully space-rated vehicle capable of interplanetary flight, it was still out of its element in the tight confines of the habitat module.

The V!room tanker, however, was not too worried – as long as the infantry stayed near, it was unlikely the enemy would be able to control advantageous firing positions.

1st platoon reported contact, and the channel was filled with screams, explosions, and howls of pain.

The tanker took aim at the approximate position of the enemy, and fired his cannon into the fray.

* * *

Betty kicked a hole in the commando's faceplate, slammed him – hard - into one of his comrades, and flung both mortally wounded V!room against the far end of the room. Across the room, X-5 continued to lay down fire to suppress the troops trying desperately to reach their comrades.

The room exploded, Betty felt herself fly across the room, and Betty's faceplate went black as it shut down completely to protect Betty's face from the blinding light.

END

* * *

 _This segment of Atomic Betty was sponsored by Spaceflight Initiative, civilization's premier space exploration agency, and co-sponsored by the Powersat Corporation, cis-lunar space's premier beamed power corporation._

 _Factoid Time with Atomic Betty_

 _Hi, guys! I'm Atomic Betty! I zip around the galaxy at both supraluminal and relativistic speeds thanks to alien technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic!._

 _Which, unfortunately, our brave scientists and engineers here on Earth do not posses._

 _As I mentioned previously, the Voyager probes would take over 70,000 years to reach the nearest star – that is, if they were aimed at Proxima in the first place._

 _Our engineers have upped their ante since Voyager._

 _The TAU (thousand-astronomical-unit) probes, tossed out by the manned KRONOS missions to Saturn in the 1980s*, will take thirty years to reach their target distances, and would take nearly ten thousand years to travel the four light-years to Proxima. That is, if they were aimed at Proxima in the first place, which, again, they were not._

 _The FOCAL probes, tossed out by the manned JOTUN missions to Uranus and Neptune in the late 90s*, would take five thousand years to reach Proxima, but were again not aimed at it._

 _Obviously, any interstellar probe will require radically new propulsion technologies to attain the immense speeds necessary for interstellar travel._

 _This is why Project STARSHOT, currently progressing into its final stages, uses what engineers call a laser sail. Light reflected off objects exerts a force on them, pushing them forward and causing them to accelerate. Solar sails work on this principle, receiving a gentle push from sunlight._

 _If all goes to plan, Project STARSHOT will use a giant battery of space-based lasers with the power output of the entire province of Texas to accelerate a 100-kilogram probe to half the speed of light, allowing it to reach Proxima Centauri in about 10 years._

 _Pretty cool, huh? Imagine all the awesome stuff we'll get to see!_

 _Tell your parents! Vote for candidates supporting a bigger space budget!_

 _*This is totally not our universe. The hypothetical TAU, FOCAL, and Breakthrough Starshot missions have been advocated by real-world scientists, but were (obviously) not undertaken for technological and budgetary reasons._


	6. Ex Machina

"Captain. We have been surrounded. Our tactical position is untenable."

Betty shook her head to clear the disorientation, and curled her body up further to avoid enemy fire.

By applying the force of deceleration to every atom in her body simultaneously, her armor's inertics had prevented her from being splattered into goo by her high-velocity impact with the cast-basalt wall. Unfortunately, they had also given her a splitting headache.

As the defogging nanobots cleared her vomit off her faceplate, Betty got her first good look at her surroundings. She was (courtesy of X-5) in a small apartment, buried deep in the maze of apartment buildings that comprised the habitat complex – as safe from enemy armor as any location she could think of.

Beside her, X-5 and Sparky stood poised, ready to cover the two main approaches to their position. While she couldn't hear a thing (the habitat module having been depressurized long ago), the thuds emanating from the floor told a story of an enemy methodically blasting the complex to rubble to avoid close-quarters fighting.

A drone scuttled in through the doorway, and was immediately shot down by Sparky.

"Craters! They know we're here!"

Betty blasted a hole in the ceiling, and motioned for her team to follow.

"Get moving, guys! We'll break for the building on the right!"

"Captain, I am receiving a signal from a newly-established friendly battle network. Our gambit has succeeded. Enemy forces in our vicinity have been engaged."

* * *

Fabricators, or "Fabbers", range from small desktop-sized super-3-D printers capable of printing one stuffed animal at a time to massive assembly-lines of nanotech-based 3-D printers linked to foundries, robotic arms and other manipulators, capable of mass-producing starships.

Fifteen minutes earlier, Fabricators A through D of the primary industrial complex had gone online, producing a flurry of new robots in a frenzy of activity. This was consistent with an attempt to repair the grievous damage the battle had inflicted on the facility.

Unbeknownst to the V!room, hidden amongst the laundry list of repair drones and new panelling were tens of thousands of lightly-disguised combat robots.

The V!room had not had the wherewithal to override the firewalls on the fabricators. Nonetheless, they had been able to produce diamondoid projectiles, surveillance drones and small nuclear mining explosives (apparently not restricted by the firewalls) in profusion.

X-5, on the other hand, had had an extensive library of Galactic Guardians-developed software weapons, and the technical savvy to employ them.

The thousands of thinly-disguised combat robots had taken up positions throughout the facility, secured important assets, and, at a stroke, had launched a coordinated assault on the V!room forces, pulling the facility out from under them.

* * *

The V!room commander, Blue Frond, fumed as he was stripped of his armor by the combat drones that had emerged from the installation's fabricators.

His operation had been completely successful. Under the threat of incineration by the Pulsar, the station-operators had agreed to be taken aboard his ship, and the installation had been taken with minimal casualties.

But the Galactic community, with vested interests in preserving the market the xenophilic V!room star-nations represented, had responded by deploying a Galactic Guardian, with weapons and ships that outclassed his own by a substantial margin.

He still felt like a fool, however, for falling for the same diversionary tactics twice.

In both the space and groundside engagement, the Galactic Guardian had demonstrated a preference for diverting enemy forces and attention to what appeared to be the major threat – a manned spaceship, combat personnel – and attacking from another axis with automated weapons.

Blue Frond heard the unfamiliar clack-clack of a bipedal gait, looked up, and came face-to-face with his enemy for the first time.

* * *

Betty put on her stern face, and turned towards the V!room commander – a trilaterally symmetric omnivorous filter-feeder, which had evolved to suck smaller filter-feeders from the waters of a surf zone under a distant sun.

"By order of the Galactic Guardians, you are being placed under arrest to evaluate the legality of your actions during this engagement under Galactic Law."

The alien sneered (or at least appeared to through the translation filter of Betty's Babel Fish).

"Ahh… so I'm being dragged in front of a kangaroo court for galactic humiliation. The self-righteousness of the Galactic community knows no bounds, doesn't it? Or… are my actions going to be used as a casus belli? To swing Galactic opinion in favor of military intervention in the V!room Wars?"

Betty frowned.

"Umm… no. I think it's more of an inquest. Personally, I don't think you really did anything wrong. Your government is already waging a declared war, and although you could have shielded your prisoners better, you did park them outside the facility to try to keep them out of the crossfire..."

The alien chuckled.

"You really believe that the court will be an inquest? That "Justice" will be served?"

A puzzled look came over Betty's face.

"Why the heck do you hate galactic civilization so much? We brought you people new technologies, entertainment, culture…"

The alien's flew into a rage.

"…which completely tore apart our civilization! Half the star-nations that collaborated with you outsiders are now in the clutches of long and bloody civil wars! Corporations and traders came with super-cheap unlocked fabricators, personal spacecraft, self-replicating nanoswarms, mind upgrading packages – available to every single lunatic and imbecile that wanted one! Do you realize what happens when a lunatic gets his hands on a small, cheap, intergalactic spacecraft? Or a self-replicating fusion-powered blaster that runs on the hydrogen in water? Or an unlocked fabber?"

Betty raised an eyebrow.

"They go on a hunting trip to the game preserve planet of Ursa Minor?"

The alien screamed.

"NO! They launch a one-man war on the government, crank their spacecraft up to 0.99c, and blow up half a continent by smashing their ship into it! Then they dump a self-replicating nano-plague on what's left of the planet and kill everyone on it within two weeks!"

Betty cocked her head.

"Sounds like a minor problem. Why didn't the planetary government raise the planetary shields or prepare a blue goo response?"

The alien sighed.

"It didn't have any of those things! It hadn't bought them yet!"

X-5 interjected.

"Captain, this enemy has fallen for the Luddite Fallacy. After V!room society adjusts to accommodate Galactic technology, every V!room will enjoy a higher standard of living. A net gain in happiness will result despite the short-term turmoil."

The alien fumed.

"And just how many billion V!room have to die before we reach that point?"

Betty's watch beeped.

"Our relief's here. Time to go, boys."

END

* * *

This segment of Atomic Betty was sponsored by Big Happy Foods.

Big Happy Foods is proud to present the Kiddie Hot Pot Meal!

 _A pair of hands turns on an induction heater beneath a fun-sized pot of soup._

It's simple.

 _A pair of chopsticks places a thin slice of beef into a hot pot (already occupied by a serving of noodles)._

It's fun.

 _A thin slice of beef is delivered to a smiling mouth. The camera pans out to reveal a happy kid._

And it's delicious!

Now with free Atomic Betty, X-5, and Sparky action figures! Only Cr 5.99!

大快樂！(jingle)

Dai Fai Lok!


	7. Closing Remarks

Betty ran into the 6th Grade classroom just as the bell rang, and her teacher duly ticked her name off the attendance sheet.

"That was quick. Where'd you go?"

"The Large Magellanic Cloud."

Noah's eyes went wide, and he gave a low whistle.

"Must be some hyperdrive you have. What did you do?"

Betty began to tick items off her fingers.

"Saw a pulsar, destroyed an alien task force, recaptured an asteroid."

Noah's eyes widened.

"In forty minutes?"

Betty just laughed.

* * *

"Admiral! It is good to see you."

"Ahh… X-5. Excellent work blasting those… blasted V!room out of the sky. I'll see that you all receive commendations for your superb performance."

X-5's attention turned to the Admiral's comically tall stack of books, fossils, and notes.

"Admiral, would you like some assistance?"

DeGill opened his mouth to refuse, then thought better of it.

"Yes. I'd like you to help me analyze these publications for analytical flaws, cross-check their sources, and verify the authenticity of these fossils."

DeGill frowned.

"Oh, and all of this is to be classified Top Secret. You are not to discuss this with anyone, not even your Captain and crew, unless I provide them with the necessary clearance."

"Of course, Admiral. What is the subject matter?"

DeGill smiled.

"Natural history."

END

*An implication of the forty-minute adventure is that the mining station cannot be located too far from the pulsar (at most a few light-minutes), or the relativistic missiles would have taken too long to reach their objective to fit into the timeline. The escape velocity of a neutron star is very high, and can approach half the speed of light - well within the velocity ranges relativistic missiles operate within - thus allowing them to be used for hypervelocity slingshot maneuvers.

* * *

 _This segment of Atomic Betty was sponsored by the Education Bureau._

 _Atomic Betty walks on screen, clad in her civilian outfit instead of her white-and-pink BDU._

 _Hey, guys! Now I know what you're thinking: How is it that I have time to save the galaxy when I have to go to school? I can barely make enough time for fun as it is!_

 _The trick is good time management._

 _Draw up a timetable for yourselves, either using pen and paper or with your satphone. Estimate how much time you will need to complete each task – you'll get better at this as you do it more – and set aside time for each thing._

 _Give yourself at least eight hours of sleep. Don't try to cram the day before your test or exam –you'll just end up groggy during your assessment._

 _Whatever you do, don't multitask. Focus on one task at a time, and move on to the next once you're done. Never try to watch TV and work on an assignment at the same time. If you can't concentrate at home, try going to a study room in the local library or a similar location. Go to a different location if things don't seem to work out._

 _Remember this, guys: Civilizations are only as good as their people, and their people are only as good as their education systems._

 _So get back to work! Unless you've finished already, in which case, play hard!_


End file.
